The second-last club match of the season, usually when the club visits this venue it is very cold and is a hard silverfish match with no carp caught or just the 1 or 2 carp caught on the whole lake, although there are plenty of carp in there.

It was unseasonably mild for the week before so the silvers at least should be feeding ok and perhaps a few carp would show. On the day there was a cold mist which hung around for over half the match.

I drew the near bank and deep water, both my rigs were on 0.10 mainline and 0.08 hooklengths. My plan was to use maggot over groundbait at 11m and loosefeed caster at around 6m with a method feeder across to the island for the chance of a carp or bream. On the whistle in went 3 balls of GB laced with a few dead maggots and casters.

I was late starting AS USUAL! so about 10 minutes into the match I started on the 11m line. Nothing after a few minutes so I went on the method for a while to let the pole line settle. Alan on my left had caught a carp on the method by now. Nothing for me after another 15-20 minutes so time to try the pole.

Some roach had arrived over the groundbait but it was sporadic, all the time I had been feeding a few casters regularly on the short line so when the bites slowed it was time to feed a ball of GB on 11m and go to the caster line, another run of roach and as I would hope they were a better average size on caster. One skimmer put in an appearance and I had one small perch on the 11m line but otherwise it was all roach.

I swapped between the two lines which kept a few coming and the occasional cast or 3 on the method brought no bonus. Alan had 4 carp and with 10 minutes to go round went his tip again, producing the 5th and his biggest carp of the day.

I felt I had done ok on the silvers but would be beaten by the few who had carp and one who had a good run of silvers including 2 or 3 decent skimmers, that was fairly accurate because 3 anglers had caught a carp plus silvers and Alan won with his 5 carp and a few silvers. Only the one person beat me with all silvers so I was 5th overall with my 9lb 8oz.